Sometimes I wonder at the musings of a child. My family and I were having a garage sale and my daughter asked me what was going to happen with all the money “she” made. I thought this was funny about how she thought it was her money. Sometimes some feel more “entitled” to certain things than they should. As a family we share certain things, but in the business world it’s a whole different ball game when it comes to what is shareable especially in terms of cash flow.
As a business owner I constantly look at how I can increase profits and the bottom line. One of the ways I believe a company can control some of the profits is by controlling shrinkage or inventory loss. Statistics show that over 70 percent of losses come from internal factors instead of external factors. Losses can take many forms: damages, external or internal theft, or just lack of efficiency in processes.
For example in a bar, there are several employees, who enjoy the bar and the work is good, but one or two have things going on in their personal lives that are causing issues for them. They show up to work, do what is told, a decent employee, but shortages keep happening in that department. All looks ok, except margins are low. Maybe “no sales”, “overrings”, or “breakage” is high. So what’s causing all of this?
One of the causes we’ve seen in the past, is the trend of friends being “fed” drinks. It’s easy enough to ring up one beer and pass two across the bar. Which means as business owner you are only getting revenue for 50% of the inventory going out. Another cause that can happen is an item being sold and the register is backed out. No Sales are showing up because of a human or computer error and leaves extra cash in the drawer to be later skimmed by the person doing the final count. A third cause could be that the wrong drink is being poured and then sent back. And your costs go up due to your inventory going to waste. All of these causes are controlled by a person. And when they’re not monitored, they can easily add up to large amounts of profit lost.
Imagine a drink at 5.00 per glass disappearing a few times say 5x a day. Preventable perhaps. But now add that up 4 days a week. How about over a month? Over a year? That could turn into $5200.00 a year, that you could have easily kept in your pocket if you can increase the efficiency of your.
Another scenario that happens to businesses is losing customers before they are event served. Take a restaurant for example, first impressions play a major role. One of the biggest things that my family values is being greeted at the door by a friendly staff. Occasionally, I’ve entered and no one was even at the hostess station. We didn’t know what to do, where to go, how to feel and promptly will leave to go take our business elsewhere. Is that important to you? Some of those places we haven’t returned to, and how much was my family ticket of 5 was worth…. 50-100 dollars per meal? A few of those will add up fast as well.
So how do you solve this issue? Both of these situations can be monitored with cameras in the right locations. Product and cash can be monitored as well as courtesy services. Cameras are an investment in managing your business. These situations affect your profit margins whether it’s losing extra inventory or a potential customer that may turn into a regular. Can you afford to NOT know what is going on?
At Hard Target Systems we evaluate these kind of capabilities with every install. We believe your profits are your profits, not someone else’s. Knowing where your money is going is an important factor into whether you have a profitable month and that’s the BOTTOM LINE.